About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Friday, November 18, 2016

Death sentences against Morsi and 21 other member of the Muslim Brotherhood revoked

Prisoner Morsi

Egypt’s Court of Cassation revoked on Tuesday 14 november death sentences and
ordered retrials for ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and other
Muslim Brotherhood leaders over the 2011 Wadi El-Natrunprison break case.
The court also revoked the death penalties against Muslim Brotherhood
Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, and other MB figures including Brotherhood
deputy leader Rashad Bayoumy, and 2012's parliament speaker and MB
figure Saad El-Katatni. The court also cancelled life sentences for 21 others in the same case.
The defendants had been charged with "damaging and setting fire to
prison buildings," "murder," "attempted murder," "looting prison weapons
depots" and "releasing prisoners" while escaping from the prison
outside Cairo during the January 2011 uprising.
This was the only death sentence issued against Morsi to date.The ex-president has received only one final verdict: a 20-year
imprisonment handed down in October over the Ittihadeya clashes case,
after his defence exhausted all appeals in the case.
Morsi is still being tried in three other cases. In the first, known as
the Qatar espionage case, he was sentenced to a total of 40 years in
prison (a life imprisonment sentence of 25 plus an additional 15 years).
A court hearing to decide on his appeal is scheduled for 27 November.
In the second case, Morsi and 16 others including Brotherhood figures
Mohamed Badie and Essam El-Erian, were convicted of espionage (unrelated
to the Qatar case) and sentenced last June to life in prison.
In the case, prosecutors charged Morsi and 35 other defendants with
conspiring with foreign powers -- including Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah
and Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- to destabilise Egypt.The sentence has been appealed.
Finally, Morsi is being tried with others on charges of insulting the judiciary.
A hearing on this case is set for December 10.